Posts Tagged ‘Queens Plaza’
could furnish
As mentioned yesterday, while you’ve been sleeping, I’ve been out working.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This happens every so often to a humble narrator. Circadian rhythms short circuit somehow, and a distinctly nocturnal phase occurs. Desire to record scenes observed remains, however, and specialized kit is required. Queens looks so interesting at night, as the concrete devastations are generally well lit. Above – the Long Island Expressway’s 106 foot trussed apex over the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabled Newtown Creek.
This sort of shot is tripod country, of course.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking north along Dutch Kills in the direction of the Sunnyside Yards and Queens Plaza, a scene familiar and loved, for it depicts the waterway’s turning basin which once fed maritime traffic into the Degnon Terminal via a barge to rail facility. These shots were all captured using my trusty old Canon G10, btw, mounted on a magnetic tripod. This particular bit of camera support allows a secure connection to ferrous surfaces via the use of multiple rare earth magnets, which in the case of the shot above was the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge itself. The magnet tripod, in effect, transforms the bridge itself into a tripod via its electromagnetic grip.
These are ISO 80 15 second exposures, captured with a narrow aperture – f8 – for those of you who are curious shutterbugs. Additionally, the light meter was set to the “tungsten” temperature, which caused the light captured to favor the blue side of the spectrum rather than the oranges and reds which street lighting normally produces. The camera was outfitted with a remote release cable, and I just had to time out the sequence of traffic lights on either side of the bridge to ensure that passing vehicle traffic didn’t introduce a ruinous vibration to the bridge which would transmit up to the lens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Walking back to Astoria in the darkness along Skillman Avenue from Dutch Kills, certain apertures in the fence lines of the Sunnyside Yards allowed me to secure and trigger the camera fortuitously. The 7 train, notorious for its multitudinous and unexplained delays, was just sitting there waiting for a humble narrator to record it.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
September 20th, 2015
Glittering Realms Walking Tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, click here for details and tickets
incomprehensible if
As detailed in this recent post, my camera was destroyed in an accident.
For those of you who have offered donations to pay for its replacement, the “Donate” button below will take you to paypal. Any contributions to the camera fund will be greatly appreciated, and rewarded when money isn’t quite as tight as it is at the moment.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Citizen Narrator found himself walking through the pedestrian paradise called Queens Plaza recently. The commissars who guide the workers paradise of Queens – from the offices of central planning in the Shining City – would encourage every common worker to do so, in order to experience the glorious cultural vibrancy and ethnic diversity of this testiment to collectivism and proletarian rule. Under our glorious new system, all citizens will be afforded the opportunity to visit secular cathedrals like Queens Plaza. Just a short time ago, when the financial industry vampires occupied City Hall, such things were one hundred percent denied to any common worker and reserved for the aristocracy.
Imagine what it was like in those bad old days, when public defecation was still considered a crime, under the despotic rule of these capitalist strigoi and fascists who so recently monopolized our municipal life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Under the guidance of First Citizen De Blasio, all injustice shall soon be struck down. Crime is only criminal if it is so defined to be. The First Citizen learned his trade in the 1980’s in Nicuaragua, while defying the official edicts of the Capitalists in Washington, who denied aid and comfort to the enemy. So great was the First Citizen’s compassion, and true his convictions, that he continued to rally aide for the Ortega regime after returning to his native New York.
The First Citizen has many loyal supporters, of course, for no great champion of the Proletariot can work alone. Accusations by recidivist elements of the old regime notwithstanding, it is ridiculous to suggest that the First Citizen’s agenda is bought and paid for by this cabal of concerned comrades.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The vampiric elements of the old regime, who inflicted a million trees upon the people and imprisoned them for minor offenses like public drunkeness or urination, writhe and twist under the reforms offered by the First Citizen. Luckily enough for the proletarian masses, our leader has cut funding for maintenance of these examples of “green infrastructure” shortly after rising from within the Party to his well deserved position as our leader. The First Citizen demands that all new infrastructure be red.
Soon, the only crime prosecutable by the Police will be the harboring of counter revolutionary ideologies.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
July 18th, 2015
Newtown Creek City of Water Day Boat Tour
with Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, click here for details and tickets.
July 26th, 2015
Modern Corridor – LIC, Queens Walking Tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, click here for details and tickets.
rapid run
Content warning today – blood and gore, in today’s post. Not kidding.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor carried one in a westerly direction through the Carridor – down Northern Blvd. to its junction with Jackson Avenue and towards Queens Plaza, from the rolling hillocks of raven tressed Astoria. Having some spare time to kill on the way, one elected to spend some of it getting “artsy fartsy” with the camera in this overly familiar corridor.
Note: Wasn’t kidding about the blood and gore stuff in this post. If you’re faint of heart, stop reading now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Plaza and the area surrounding it are a devilish place for photography due to the contrast of elevated Subway shadows and bright sky. Hence – one such as myself likes to wave the camera around a bit in the name of staying “sharp,” exposure wise. Never know what you’re going to find around here, I always say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the case of this particular afternoon, what I found was this unfortunate dead thing.
Once some sort of baby bird, something had expertly and partially skinned it and removed its head. That little bit in the lower right of the shot was actually the heart. I see a lot of dead things as I walk around – flat rats, dead pigeons and the like, but this… this was deucedly odd. Cat? Rat? Who knows?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Around thirty feet further east of the dead thing, a small pile of blood was encountered. Now when I say small, it actually covered around a third of a sidewalk box, but by Queens Plaza standards this is actually a small amount. I would venture that this blood was not that of the dead thing described above, but had exsanguinated from a higher form of animal instead – likely from one of the humans who are known to infest this area.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The spatter above offers evidence of the blood I warned you about at the top of the post, and the third shot contains the gore. The truth of our times, as offered in graphic narrative, is presented plainly and in full color at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
July 12th, 2015
Glittering Realms – Greenpoint, Brooklyn Walking Tour
with Newtown Creek Alliance, click here for details and tickets.
July 26th, 2015
Modern Corridor – LIC, Queens Walking Tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, click here for details and tickets.
preserved body
LIC, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One always seems to be heading somewhere, but somehow I never seem to arrive. An attempt to grab as many shots of the Bank of Manhattan Building in Queens Plaza, before a 70 atory monstrosity rises next to it (literally) has been underway for several months. Got this one on Sunday morning, while walking over to Greenpoint to conduct a Newtown Creek Walking Tour for Newtown Creek Alliance and the Municpal Art Society’s Janeswalk event. I’m seldom found in Queens Plaza in the morning, so a few camera dials were adjusted and the shutter button was pressed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along my path, this hunk of construction equipment was encountered, which was similarly bathed in morning light. Should Western Queens ever adopt its own flag, I would suggest that both back hoe’s and construction cranes form part of the design.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of construction, over on the corner of Jackson Avenue and the former Jane Street in Queens Plaza, you’d never know that West Chemical was ever there. Thats part of the plan I suppose – who would want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a condominium in Queens Plaza if they knew their home was founded on the site of a chemical factory? The Real Estate Industrial Comlex has done pretty good work in obfuscating the history of Hunters Point – no one there asks about the plumes of Benzene, Oil, or solvents in the ground.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
May 16, 2015 –
13 Steps Around Dutch Kills with Atlas Obscura
with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman, click here for details and tickets.
May 31, 2015 –
Newtown Creek Boat Tour
with Working Harbor Committee and Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman, click here for tickets.
sinister resignation
Gotham City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been getting a big kick out of the “Gotham” television series. For those unfamiliar, it’s a prequel to the Batman storyline, focusing in on its early days when Bruce Wayne was but a child. The titular focus of the series is on the future Police Commissioner of Gotham City, James Gordon, and viewers get to meet early versions of the rogue’s gallery. Fun show.
What I’ve been particularly entertained by, of course, are the abundance of set pieces in Western Queens. The Waynes die on Davis Street between the Sunnyside Yard and Jackson Avenue, for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of Gotham’s shots are digitally altered in some way, adding in skyscrapers or changing the shapes of instantly recognizable “NYC” landmarks, but just about everywhere they go on that show is quite familiar to me. Our Lady of the Pentacle has had to endure me pointing at the television screen whilst shouting out “hey, that’s John Quadrozzi’s pier in Red Hook” more than once.
When I’ve been out and about in recent weeks, on more than one occasion the thought that “LIC really is Gotham City, isn’t it?” has formed up some three inches behind my eyes. That led me to start casting the show with people I know, of course.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The question is, of course, which one of our local billionaires is going to start dressing up in black leather and emerging from his manse to beat the tar out of poor people in the dead of night, with the defacto endorsement of the Commissioner of Police. If any of you spot an elaborately outfitted automobile speeding along Jackson Avenue, particularly one with some sort of design motif related to bats – well…
If you see something, say something.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 